


A Mathematician and an Assassin Walk into a Bar

by starsandgraces



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Blood and Injury, Gen, Gun Violence, Original Character Death(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-14
Updated: 2014-02-14
Packaged: 2018-01-12 08:55:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1184320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starsandgraces/pseuds/starsandgraces
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Allison Argent kills people for a living. Until she's assigned to erase Project Hecate from existence, she's never questioned that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Mathematician and an Assassin Walk into a Bar

**Author's Note:**

  * For [obsidianlullaby](https://archiveofourown.org/users/obsidianlullaby/gifts).



> Written for obsidianlullaby for Teen Wolf Ladyfest! I hope this is what you wanted. :)

Her next assignment comes in at zero one twenty hours. Allison's awake when it arrives; she never needs much sleep when she's active.

There are three targets, which isn't unusual, but she frowns when she sees the timescale required. She needs to take them all out in the same night—and preferably within minutes of each other. The mission is also marked highest priority, which gives her next to no time to prepare for the difficulty of removing three targets so quickly.

"An engineer, a mathematician, and a physicist," Allison murmurs, skimming the intel on each one. "Sounds like a joke."

The three of them have built a weapon of some kind, though there aren't any specifics beyond its codename: Project Hecate. Allison doesn't need specifics like that to do her job. She just needs to get in, remove her targets, retrieve the data, and make it all look like an accident before disappearing. That means no bullets, no poison—nothing that might leave a trace of her presence behind. Even a knife is risky, if she hits bone. A garrotte seems like the most sensible weapon.

She'll burn the lab when she's done, its former occupants inside. If she's lucky, it'll be dismissed as an unfortunate accident.

Then again, Allison's never needed luck when she has her considerable skills to rely on.

Once she's finished going over the assignment—memorising the floorplan, her targets' appearances and skills— Allison dresses for the job in heavy cotton trousers, combat books, a tank top, her aunt's leather jacket, and, of course, gloves. She pulls her hair back into a low bun at the nape of her neck, not leaving a single hair loose. Thanks to long practice, she can be ready for a mission in fewer than four minutes. It's one of the reasons she's so highly regarded by her superiors. If the US government needs something done efficiently and quietly, they call on her.

Allison opens her bag and picks out a double-loop garrotte, sliding it into her pocket. Her hand hesitates over her favourite semi-automatic pistol before she passes it over in favour of her M-Ziels. Four for her holsters, one in each boot. Six throwing knives might be overkill for this mission when Allison knows she can kill each target with a single blade, but she also knows the value of being over—rather than under—prepared. 

She's in her nondescript white car and on the road ahead of oh two hundred. It's a half-hour drive across the border to Nevada and, if everything goes to plan, she'll be back and in bed by four.

The lab has security cameras, but according to her intel, only the external cameras are monitored. Inside, she just has to make sure the drive that records security footage is one of the first casualties of the first. Allison parks far enough away to avoid being spotted by them and approaches the building on foot, following a path that leads her neatly outside the gaze of the cameras. She shorts out the lock in a few moments and it clunks open, letting her in.

There are supposed to be more locks inside, but when Allison reaches the first one, she finds the door propped open by a stack of notebooks. For a facility developing a weapon dangerous enough to worry her superiors, the lack of security is laughable. She palms one of her knives, just in case, and continues deeper into the lab, heading for the central control room where she expects to find her targets and the computer holding the data she needs.

She runs into the first target on her way there: Adam Haines, the engineer. He has his back to Allison and doesn't even realise she's there until it's too late. The coffee he was getting spills on the floor as he scrabbles at the garrotte around his neck, but he can't get a purchase on the wire before he slips into unconsciousness.

Allison leaves his body where it falls. She doesn't have the time to spare to hide it, and she's sure neither of the other targets will find it before she gets to them, in any case.

It turns out she's wrong about that. Ralph Lombard comes around the corner and sees Haines' body as she's moving away from it. His gaze goes from the body to Allison, and the colour drains out of his face in a way that might be comical in another situation.

"Please," says Doctor Lombard, holding up his hands. "Please, I have—"

She doesn't wait to find out what he has; the garrotte cuts him off. Lombard dies with her knee between his shoulder blades and two loops of wire around his throat. 

Allison exhales heavily and steps over his body. Two down, one to go. 

This time, Allison isn't wrong about where to look. She heads directly to the control room and when she opens the door, her final target is at one of the computers, frantically typing with one hand. The monitors all begin flashing a warning, which the woman dismisses with a sequence of numbers that flow out of her fingers like music.

"Step away from the computer," Allison says.

Doctor Martin whips around. "I've wiped all the information on Hecate from the system," she says, raising the gun in her left hand to point at Allison. "There are no off-site backups. If you kill me, you'll have nothing."

Allison holds up her hands, noting that the gun the doctor holds is the same one she left behind tonight. They're not made for left-handers. "Why would you do that, Doctor Martin?"

"I don't want to die." The hand holding the gun is shaking slightly, and Allison sees a chance.

"I bet you don't even know how to use that," she says, gambling. She notices the thumb safety is off a fraction of a second before Doctor Martin shoots her.

The bullet rips through Allison's leather jacket and the outer edge of her shoulder, leaving a burning line of pain in its wake. She moves almost before she's aware of it, grabbing the gun by the barrel and yanking it out of Doctor Martin's hand. One of her knives presses against the doctor's throat.

"I'm going to have to take you in. Shit," Allison says in disgust, reholstering her knife. She flips the safety and tucks the gun into the side of her belt and clamps her hand over the wound on her arm. It's bleeding slowly, but she can already feel the stickiness than heralds clotting, so she isn't too worried.

"Who sent you?" she whispers, closing her eyes. "What did we do?"

"The United States government. You planned to sell Hecate to enemies of the state. You're a traitor to your country."

Doctor Martin starts laughing, but it's hollow and desperate around the edges. "Who do you think _we_ work for?"

She has proof, of course, and she shows Allison. The same general who signs off on her missions appears multiple times, in name and in image. There isn't any public link between them, and even if there was, no one could have known she'd be sent on this mission ahead of time. The evidence is real. She clutches her injured shoulder a little tighter, letting the pain clear her mind.

Allison exhales, making a snap decision. "We need to get out of here, or neither one of us is going to live through the night."

Doctor Martin looks at her for a long heartbeat, then nods. Between the gun, the evidence, and the overnight bag she retrieves from under a desk, it's clear that she knew this was coming. Allison feels a flutter of admiration for that kind of foresight.

"There's a white Civic up the street," Allison says, digging her car keys out of her pocket and holding them out. "Wait for me there. You don't want to see what happens next."

"My car's just outside," Doctor Martin replies with a frown.

"And your car's the one they'll put an APB out on when they realise you didn't die with your colleagues," she says bluntly. The doctor winces, clutching her bag to her chest. "Walk out of here the same way you'd leave every night. Don't do anything suspicious."

"I'm leaving my car behind. That's pretty suspicious."

Allison huffs. "Don't do anything _else_ suspicious. Look, just go. We don't have a lot of time."

Doctor Martin looks as if she might argue again, but she closes her mouth and goes, the echoing click of her high heels on the tiled floor fading away to nothing.

Clean-up is always messy, even when there's no blood. She drags both bodies into the room where she found Doctor Martin and splashes isopropyl alcohol around liberally. The mission is already blown; it won't matter if anyone realises there's been foul play. She does retrieve the bullet Doctor Martin shot her with, however. There's no point in being careless.

"I'm sorry," she says to Lombard and Haines as she disables the building's fire system. And then she lights the accelerant and leaves the room. She sets more fires throughout the lab, ensuring everything will burn. There won't be anything left of Project Hecate for the government to find.

Allison follows the path that conceals her from the view of the cameras and stands just outside their range, watching until she can see smoke leaking from the edges of the door. Then she turns and gets into her car. Doctor Martin wordlessly drops the key into her outstretched hand.

"Where are we going?" she asks.

"My place. I want to fix up my shoulder and get my things." Allison won't admit it to the doctor, but it's an entirely sentimental trip. She doesn't own anything she can't replace—though her passport might come in handy.

"Do you even know what it is you killed two men for?" Doctor Martin asks. She still has her bag held tightly to her chest, as if Allison's going to take it away from her.

"Knowing that wasn't necessary for my mission, Doctor Martin" she says, and immediately curses herself mentally for sounding like a robot.

"You should call me Lydia," she says eventually.

She adjusts her hands on the wheel. Her shoulder aches. "I'm Allison."

"Did you ever watch _Stargate_ when you were a kid, Allison?"

"The movie or the TV show?"

"Either. Hecate's something like that, without the alien technology. And without the aliens, despite what plenty of people think when they hear I work for the government in Nevada." Doctor Martin—Lydia—smiles slightly.

"So, it's a stargate?"

"A wormhole. So far we've only been able to move matter through space, but we were getting closer to moving it through time."

"That's impossible," Allison says, shaking her head.

"Trust me, I'm beginning to wish it was," Lydia says sharply. "Then I'd have a comfortable teaching post at an east coast college instead of driving around in the middle of the night with the person who killed my colleagues, by order of my boss."

Allison's mouth twists. "What next?" she asks.

"I have a contact in the media. She'll release all the information about Hecate to the public. The math, the plans, everything. If anyone can build it, it's not valuable anymore."

"If anyone can build it, someone's going to use it as a weapon. Just like the government wanted to do," Allison says.

Lydia turns her face to the window. "Maybe," she says, so softly Allison can hardly hear her over the engine. "But we always wanted it to be open source. Hecate was never meant to be owned by one country's government."

They finish up the journey in silence. Lydia doesn't seem to want to talk, and Allison isn't going to push her. That's the least she owes her right now.

When they arrive, Lydia goes into the bathroom to call her contact. Allison sends a brief message to her superiors to buy them some time— _mission successful, going dark_ — before she strips off her jacket and her tank top to assess the damage the bullet did to her shoulder.

Her jacket is torn and bloody, but repairable. Her arm is also torn and bloody, and Allison probes at it experimentally with her fingers, hissing quietly through her teeth. It's deeper than she thought, and she can already feel the throb that threatens infection. She pulls her first aid kit out and opens it one-handed.

"You should let me take a look at that," Lydia says, reemerging. She's taken off her shoes. "I'm a doctor, after all."

"Not that kind."

"I took some classes." She takes the kit from Allison and pokes through it, retrieving saline, alcohol wipes, sutures, scissors, and a needle. Her nails are painted very red, Allison notices suddenly. Everything about Lydia is surprising.

"First aid?" Allison asks, tearing her eyes away from Lydia's hands.

"Pre-med." _Surprise_. "You practically have a mobile OR in here, but no painkillers stronger than Advil."

"They dull my mind. Pain sharpens it. And anyway," Allison adds, "if I'm hurt badly enough to need painkillers, I'm probably five minutes from dead."

Lydia sucks in a disapproving breath through her teeth. "Then this is going to keep your mind extra sharp."

Allison grits her teeth against the sting of alcohol on sensitive tissue as Lydia cleans out the wound and prepares to close it.

"I'm sorry I shot you," she says, rinsing away the dried blood.

"Occupational hazard," Allison says. "I was going to do worse to you."

"How did you get into this business, Allison?" Lydia asks quietly, her fingertips firm against Allison's shoulder as she stitches.

"My family was—different. Career military, you know? I was raised to believe protecting people was the most important thing," she says, squirming slightly. It's more from embarrassment at how naïve her words seem than pain from the needle.

"Hold still. But you kill people."

"I kill people who'd harm others. I do it to protect people who can't protect themselves, who don't even _know_ what they need to protect themselves from." Allison sighs, shaking her head. "That's what my family and my superiors told me. That's what I told myself."

Lydia stays quiet, but Allison can feel her judgement.

"You don't need to tell me I was stupid," she says quietly. "I know they used me."

"Done," Lydia says, snipping the suture with the scissors and giving the wound a last clean with an alcohol wipe. She sticks an adhesive bandage over it all. "You can put a shirt on now. If you want."

Allison blushes stupidly and pulls on a hoodie with a zip so she doesn't risk tearing her stitches by stretching them too far.

"We need to go back to Nevada to meet Sandra," Lydia says.

"Give me the address," Allison says, popping an Advil dry. "I'll drive."

Lydia sleeps on the way there, her heels in the footwell and her legs curled up against her chest. Allison doesn't know how she can do it. After the events of tonight, the adrenalin pumping through her veins makes her feel like she'll never sleep again.

They meet Lydia's contact at a bar. It doesn't feel right, walking into a bar at oh six hundred, when the birds are singing and the sky's just turning pink at the edges. Nevada's like another country.

Sandra isn't what Allison expected. She's a grandmotherly-looking woman who has to be in her sixties if she's a day—not the kind of person Allison would have pegged as a hard-hitting journalist ready to defy her government by releasing classified documents. Of course, that probably works in her favour.

Allison watches from across the room. Lydia and Sandra don't talk for long; Lydia passes across a memory stick and they embrace for a moment, and the meeting is over.

"Let's go," Lydia says, crossing her arms over her chest and motioning Allison to leave.

"Where to?" Allison asks, getting up and heading outside, a few steps behind Lydia. It just seems right that she helps Lydia now, following through until this is all over. It's a sort of penance, she supposes. She has to.

Lydia directs her to a bus station across town. Allison parks out front and waits for her while she goes into the ticket office, leaning against the side of the car and letting the sun warm her face. It's a beautiful morning, incongruous with the events of the night before.

"Where are you going?" Allison asks when Lydia comes back to the car for her bag.

"Mexico, to begin with. I have a passport. I had a feeling this would end with me having to get out of the country."

"They'll track you."

"It's fake," Lydia says, her lips curving up at the corners. "Or, well, it's not fake. It's totally a real passport. It's just not _mine_."

"I should stop being surprised by you," Allison says. She crosses her arms, feels the tension in her stitches.

"Probably," Lydia agrees. She shades her eyes against the sun, watching for the bus.

"Lydia, for what it's worth—I'm sorry about my part in this."

"If it wasn't you, it would have been someone else." Lydia, in her high heels, is the perfect height to hug Allison. After a moment, Allison responds, curling her uninjured arm around Lydia's waist and leaning into her. "By the way, I got two tickets," Lydia adds. "I'm going to need a bodyguard, at least for a little while. And if I'm not wrong—which, by the way, I'm usually not—you need a new job."

Allison turns her face against Lydia's shoulder and smiles.


End file.
